Breakups of corporate conglomerates have become the new fashion, and CEOs of many big and disparate companies now are having to consider the possibility of splitting up their enterprises even if they have resisted the idea before.

As the seasons changed last week, so did Mary Barra’s strategy. Through several high-profile interviews, including Time and The Wall Street Journal, the GM CEO has been trying to move the media away from eight months of preoccupation with dozens of safety recalls, without as much luck as she’d like. So she’s now shifted her angle again, to one she hopes will be more effective for America’s biggest automaker: She is sharing her strategy for the future.

The need for more innovation is clear to manufacturing CEOs, with business chiefs in a recent KPMG survey identifying innovation as the key differentiating factor to improve year-over-year growth and profitability.

Toyota defined the electric-vehicle market with the Prius hybrid when the company introduced the car to the United States in 2001. But now it’s Tesla that sets the pace in the global electrified-vehicle market, and Prius sales actually are falling.

CEOs on the ground floor of American manufacturing are growing increasingly optimistic as they see the U.S. economic recovery beginning to attain firmer ground, and the incremental improvement is resulting in stronger projections for sales of factory equipment as a result.

Business chiefs, even many across the country, have a complex relationship with Detroit. Many recognize its vast shortcomings and still employ it as a symbol of industrial and social decay. Many others instead latch on to the real renaissance occurring in the Motor City and point to it as an inspiring phoenix of a town. Still others do both.

Alibaba and Founder Jack Ma have exploded onto the global technology and investment scene via a record IPO and a valuation of more than $200 billion. Now American high-tech CEOs believe another earth-shattering move by Alibaba is inevitable. Could the Chinese internet giant perhaps even bid to acquire one of the icons of the U.S. digital industry?

Gains are still coming grudgingly in the U.S. employment market, but for many business chiefs, it seems like boom times again in at least one important respect: The “war for talent” has returned, posing challenges for an increasing number of companies and industries that depend on recruiting and retaining the right people for competitive advantage.

U.S. chief executives heading multinational companies believe the next three years will bring continued economic growth in the United States as the country finally gets over the hump. But they’re still worried about government over-regulation and their companies’ own ability to innovate to meet new market opportunities and challenges.